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Details of 100 million Facebook users published online

The personal details of 100 million Facebook users have been collected and published online in a downloadable file, meaning they will now be unable to make their publicly available information private.

However, Facebook downplayed the issue, saying that no private data had been compromised.

The information was posted by Ron Bowes, an online security consultant, on the Internet site Pirate Bay to highlight privacy issues, the BBC reported.

Bowes used code to scan the 500 million Facebook profiles for information not hidden by privacy settings. The resulting file, which allows people to perform searches of various different types, has been downloaded by more than 2,400 people.

This means that if any of those on the list decide to change their privacy settings on Facebook, Bowes and those who have the file will still be able to access information that was public when it was compiled.

Bowes’ actions also mean people who had set their privacy settings so their names did not appear in Facebook’s search system can now be found if they were friends with anyone who allowed their name to appear in searches.

On his website, www.skullsecurity.org, Bowes said the results of his code were &quot;spectacular,&quot; giving him 171 million names of which were 100 million unique.

&quot;As I thought ... about it and talked to other people, I realized that this is a scary privacy issue. I can find the name of pretty much every person on Facebook,&quot; he wrote.

&quot;Facebook helpfully informs you that &quot;[a]nyone can opt out of appearing here by changing their Search privacy settings&quot; — but that doesn't help much anymore considering I already have them all (and you will too, when you download the torrent). Suckers!&quot;

&quot;Once I have the name and URL of a user, I can view, by default, their picture, friends, information about them, and some other details,&quot; Bowes added. &quot;If the user has set their privacy higher, at the very least I can view their name and picture. So, if any searchable user has friends that are non-searchable, those friends just opted into being searched, like it or not! Oops :)&quot;

He said he discovered the top first name in the list was Michael, followed by John, David, Chris and Mike. The top surnames were Smith, Johnson, Jones, Williams and Brown.

A privacy expert expressed concern there may be more serious applications. Simon Davies, of campaign group Privacy International, told the BBC that some Facebook users &quot;did not understand the privacy settings and this is the result.&quot;

&quot;Facebook should have anticipated this attack and put measures in place to prevent it,&quot; he told the BBC. &quot;It is inconceivable that a firm with hundreds of engineers couldn't have imagined a trawl of this magnitude and there's an argument to be heard that Facebook have acted with negligence.&quot;

'A little terrifying'
Some users of Pirate Bay shared his concerns.

&quot;This is awesome and a little terrifying,&quot; lusifer69 wrote on the site. And another, Porkster, said: &quot;I don't think this is a hack, but a collection from public domain info that people have shared. The importance of the info is structuring it and allowing someone to search or compute the data.&quot;

However, jak322 said: &quot;I've got to say, who cares. All the info here is already in the public domain, is not sensitive and as a developer I already have access to what could be deemed personal and private data through the Facebook API.&quot;

In a statement emailed to msnbc.com, Facebook agreed, saying the information on the list was already available online.

&quot;People who use Facebook own their information and have the right to share only what they want, with whom they want, and when they want,&quot; it said.

&quot;Our responsibility is to respect their wishes. In this case, information that people have agreed to make public was collected by a single researcher. This information already exists in Google, Bing, other search engines, as well as on Facebook,&quot; the statement added.

&quot;No private data is available or has been compromised. Similar to a phone book, this is the information available to enable people to find each other, which is the reason people join Facebook. If someone does not want to be found, we also offer a number of controls to enable people not to appear in search on Facebook, in search engines, or share any information with applications.&quot;

Re: Details of 100 million Facebook users published online

Sounds like Ron Bowes is trying to start drama. This is similar but not as scary as when they published a million myspaces with passwords. Sounds like it is info that is already available. Plus that search feature is already defunct unless you chose not to show up at all.

Re: Details of 100 million Facebook users published online

[quote author=holly link=topic=26284.msg1683674#msg1683674 date=1280486071]
Knew what?&nbsp; This whole time you've been complaining that everything on facebook is under lock and key.&nbsp; Apparently not.&nbsp; :-P
[/quote]
I knew that Facebook would sell you guys out. See you only thought your shit was under lock and key. Joke's on you jack! Take that! :lol:

Re: Details of 100 million Facebook users published online

[quote author=Ron_NYC link=topic=26284.msg1683706#msg1683706 date=1280499346]
I knew that Facebook would sell you guys out. See you only thought your shit was under lock and key. Joke's on you jack! Take that! :lol:
[/quote]

shit! now everyone knows ive been to the pool and love the mets.&nbsp; crap.&nbsp; :roll:&nbsp; :lol:

Re: Details of 100 million Facebook users published online

[quote author=ZoMyGoddess! link=topic=26284.msg1683718#msg1683718 date=1280499817]
shit! now everyone knows ive been to the pool and love the mets.&nbsp; crap.&nbsp; :roll:&nbsp; :lol:
[/quote]
See!?! Consequences will never be the same!

Re: Details of 100 million Facebook users published online

Fascinating.. dozens of major corporations and quasi-government entities have downloaded this file.&nbsp; What could these giant organizations want with the personal information of 100 million Facebook users??&nbsp; &nbsp; :2huh:

Remember that torrent yesterday that contained the personal information off of 100 million scraped Facebook profiles? I thought it was strange that the guy didn't sell this information, since many companies would be interested. Turns out they are interested.

Reader Clint discovered that all you had to do is use something like Peer Block, which grabs the IPs of the other users also downloading the torrent and identifies which company or university or organization they belong to. You can check this yourself by hopping on the torrent and doing the same thing.

Here are the major companies that are downloading the torrent. A couple caveats to these. Just because a company is on the list, doesn't mean that it's a sanctioned download by the company itself to grab the user information for some purpose. It could easily just be some dude at the company who wanted to download the torrent himself to check it out. Also, the IP addresses assigned to a company might fluctuate (they usually don't, much, unless major companies change their connection to the internet, so it should be mostly accurate).